April storms slake a giant Northern Colorado thirst

Next in store: May flowers

Dan Woelfle pushes his snow-covered bike and trailer through the snow at the Benson Park Sculpture Garden in Loveland on Monday.
(
Jenny Sparks
)

No one -- no farmer, no backyard gardener, no federal forest manager -- could have dialed up a better weather scenario than the one Northern Colorado is in now.

Snow that fell Monday on the region's mountains and plains, including up to 8 inches in parts of Loveland, could double up Tuesday afternoon and evening.

And that would be enough to quell, at least partly, the deepest concerns about a summer drought that the numbers so far have indicated will happen.

"Based on some of these predictions, another burst might be due tomorrow afternoon and evening about like the one we've just had," Colorado state climatologist Nolan Doesken said Monday afternoon from his Fort Collins office.

Nine-year-old Allie Westman shovels the sidewalk in front of her house on East Sixth Street in downtown Loveland on Monday morning before heading off to school at Winona Elementary. (Craig Young)

"I've heard the number 20," he said, referring to the storm's snow totals. "But that might be more toward Cheyenne than right around here."

Crews in Rocky Mountain National Park took advantage of the spring snow to light fires, burning slash piles that had accumulated during the job of clearing timber that would otherwise add fuel to any fire that might break out.

"We have been burning piles whenever weather conditions have allowed, which this winter really has only been for the last month and a half," RMNP spokeswoman Kyle Patterson said.

"We are burning piles today and, weather permitting, we will continue burning this week. We still have hundreds of piles to burn so it's unlikely that this weather will allow us to complete the job."

Doesken, who heads the Colorado Climate Center based at Colorado State University, said cool, wet Aprils offer twin benefits to anyone who wants more water.

Mountain snow adds to the summer supply, while snow and rain on the plains, combined with colder temperatures, cut water demand, easing the drought from both sides of the equation.

The mountain snowpack -- the source of 90 percent of Colorado's water -- has been dismal so far this year. The watershed that feeds the Big Thompson River had on April 1 just 57 percent of the snowpack that an average year offers.

The Poudre River drainage fared not much better, with a high mountain snowpack 75 percent of average.

Doesken said the snow that has fallen during the past two weeks has changed that picture.

"Gracious, there was a nice upward turn of the graph as of Saturday," he said. "And that was before a big (mountain) storm Saturday night and Sunday morning."

And before Monday, and Tuesday.

April annually brings an average of 2 inches of precipitation -- meaning water, not snow.

Northern Colorado has already topped that for the month, with 2 inches prior to the storm the region is getting now. With more snow, and then rain, forecast through Wednesday, the month could be on a near-record track, Doesken said.

"One April that sticks out in my mind, and it was because we were a little bit worried about drought then, was 1999," he said. "In the last 10 days, we had 7 inches. That's not 7 inches of snow. That's water."

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